The current study uses keyness to identify the essential lexicon and lexical patterns of history textbooks and match them to the out-of-school input to which a young learner might be exposed. Two frequency-ordered lists have been compared using the KeyWords component of WordSmith Tools v. 5.0 (Scott 2008). The first, compiled from a corpus of history textbooks used in lower secondary schools in Italy, named CoMaS (Corpus di Manuali di Storia), ascertains words needed to study history at school. The other, compiled from a published corpus of Italian spoken language, called LIP (Lessico di Frequenza dell&#8217;Italiano Parlato), specifies words frequent in daily communication. Results show discoursal, lexical, semantic, and morphological features which may be unfamiliar to the learner, and which should therefore be considered in a syllabus designed to develop students&#8217; ability to interpret and express historical discourse.